March 2009 - Posts
By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief
BEIJING – As President Hu Jintao heads for the G-20 Summit in London to tackle the global financial crisis, Chinese media is abuzz with clashing views about how the Middle Kingdom should manage its increasingly central role in world affairs.
With their economy still expanding and banks still awash with cash – and the government holding $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves, more than half of which is invested in debt that supports the United States – the Chinese are generally taking pride in their unprecedented new clout in world affairs.
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| Sarah Jiang / NBC News |
| The new book stirring up nationalist sentiments in China: “Unhappy China – The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges.” |
"Superior system advantage" is how Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan explains China’s relative strength. He recently called for an end to the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, prompting concerns about China’s assertive economic nationalism.
And nationalism is proving to be the sensitive issue that both Chinese leaders and the public have to grapple with as they try to define the nation’s new "great power" status.
‘China is unhappy’
The latest salvo on the nationalism debate was fired by a group of scholars who argue in a best-selling new book that the current financial crisis is proof of the corruption of the world capitalist system led by the United States – and that it’s time for China to take the lead.
The group put out a collection of essays called "Unhappy China – The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges" in order to "spur, stimulate and wake up" China’s intellectuals.
The book declares: "With Chinese national strength growing at an unprecedented rate, China should stop self-debasing and come to recognize that it has the power to lead the world, and the necessity to break away from Western influence. We are most qualified to lead this world; Westerners should be second."
Conceived by the authors last October as the global financial crisis began to sweep America and the world, the book was published in early March and is selling for $4.40 a copy. Its first printing sold out and the second printing of 270,000 is reportedly selling fast as well.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV – Wafaa Younis is a woman whose heart is in the right place; she is an Israeli Arab who has made a real effort to help Palestinian children in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
She started with the boys; she wanted them to put down their stones and learn the violin, in the hope that they would not grow up and pick up a gun. I first met her three years ago when she finally persuaded the Israelis to allow the Palestinian children to leave the West Bank and go to her home in the Israeli town of Ara for violin lessons.
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| Tara Todras-Whitehall / AP file |
| Palestinian children from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank play a concert for Holocaust survivors in Holon, Israel on March 25. |
She even took them on trips to the coast; even though they grew up 30 miles from the Mediterranean, they had never seen the sea. Her first attempts to teach a few boys the violin grew into a small orchestra of boys and girls. She even rented an apartment in Jenin so that she could teach them there, because it was easier for her to cross into the West Bank than it was for them to leave.
Then Younis had an idea; as part of Israel’s annual Good Deeds Week, she would arrange a little concert in Holon, near Tel Aviv. Her young musicians from the "Strings of Freedom" orchestra would entertain Holocaust survivors. They would play their favorite classics, and also some songs of peace; a way to bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis.
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A report by the Government Accountability Office, says the U.S. pullout of 140,000 troops from Iraq will be a "massive and expensive effort." The GAO says that the withdrawal will likely increase Iraq-related costs over the next several years rather than decrease expenses.
NBC News' Steve Wende reports on the cost of packing-up all of the troops and equipment.
By NBC News Bo Gu
BEIJING – When American laser-graffiti artist James Powderly was arrested and jailed for six days in Beijing during the Olympics last August for plotting to project the words "Free Tibet" on a building near Tiananmen Square, he probably wouldn’t have imagined that half a year later Greenpeace China would be allowed to do something similar – only this time with the message: "Time is Running Out to Stop Global Warming."
On Monday Greenpeace China turned Yongdingmen, one of Beijing's ancient city gates, into a gigantic countdown clock ticking down to the United Nations' Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December.
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| Greg Baker / AP |
A security guard looks at the Greenpeace China countdown clock projected onto Yongdingmen Gate in Beijing on March 23.
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The group also called on China to play a leadership role at the meeting with strong emission control commitments, urging President Hu Jintao to personally attend the Copenhagen meeting. "As the largest global greenhouse emitter, China can and must take a leadership role in tackling global warming," Greenpeace campaigner Li Yan declared at the event.
But while Greenpeace China, which was allowed to set up shop in Beijing in 2002 (albeit only as a "branch" of the Hong Kong- registered organization), has enjoyed greater leeway than most non-governmental organizations, that doesn’t mean the floodgates of public protest are now open to all comers. Rather, the group’s environmental message happens to dovetail nicely with the Chinese government’s growing recognition – spurred by public worries – of the importance of environmental protection.
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By NBC News Shahid Qazi and Carol Grisanti
QUETTA, Pakistan – The 11-year-old girl blushed as she walked into the car dealer’s showroom on Quetta’s Adalat Road in southwest Pakistan. Her 17-year-old cousin, eyes fixed to the ground, followed her. When the younger girl asked the owner for five rupees (6 cents), he pointed to the back room and told both girls to follow him.
A stocky man in his mid-forties with sallow skin and puffy eyes, he told the girls to lift their shirts – he wanted to see. "Very nice," the owner said. "They are getting bigger," he told the 17-year-old as he touched her.
The 11-year-old was excited as she told us the story; we had followed them inside the showroom pretending to be customers interested in renting one of the Land Cruisers parked inside. The owner had given them 10 rupees (12 cents), the girls told us, more money than they had asked for. Then, giggling, they ran away.
It’s dangerous to be seen following these girls – some of their clients are wealthy feudal land barons and powerful politicians, others are ordinary shopkeepers who will give money to the poor, but want to get something in return.
The girls are part of an alarming problem that gets little attention in Pakistan.
"Prostitution is rampant in all the big cities throughout the country," said Senior Superintendent of Police, Raja Shahid, who heads the police investigation unit in Rawalpindi, a city close to the capital Islamabad.
"There are loopholes in the laws that need to be changed. For example, in order to nab the culprits, we need to conduct a raid – but we cannot conduct a raid without permission from a magistrate. By the time we get the permission we have missed our chance," he said.
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With violence drastically reduced in Iraq, car sales are taking off – dealers are reporting up to a 300 percent increase in sales from last year.
As NBC News Steve Wende reports, with all sales in cash and demand high – particularly for Humvees – there is little room to bargain prices.
BEIJING – In an exclusive interview with NBC News in Beijing, prominent American economist Joseph Stiglitz discussed the challenges facing leaders at the upcoming G-20 summit and lauded China’s handling of the global economic crisis.
Formerly chief economist of the World Bank and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, Stiglitz is in Beijing as part of a high-powered delegation from New York’s Columbia University. They are here to celebrate the opening of the new Columbia Global Center in Beijing that will promote inter-disciplinary research on global issues.
Stiglitz cited "difficult issues" facing the G-20 meeting of leaders from the world’s biggest economies beginning on April 2 – chief among them being the need to reform international financial institutions and the need for a coordinated global response to the crisis.
He also compared the Chinese and the American economic models.
"What is true is that the Chinese economic model is working very well for China, and what is also true is that the American economic model is not working well for the United States or for much of the rest of the world," he declared.
Click above to watch the complete video.
By NBC News Mushtaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – "I am Khadija Abdul Qahaar. I am a convert to Islam. I have been advised to make this video. I am going to be killed at anytime." So began a chilling video released on Wednesday by Taliban militants who are holding Qahaar, a Canadian woman, hostage somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Qahaar, whose former name is Beverly Giesbrecht, converted to Islam after 9/11. A 55-year-old journalist from Vancouver, she tried to travel into North Waziristan – one of the most dangerous areas in the world – last November with two Pakistani reporting assistants.
She wanted to interview survivors of the first ever U.S. drone attack in Bannu, a town in the Northwest Frontier Province, and then travel on to Miranshah, the main city of North Waziristan.
But Taliban militants, who patrol the Bannu-Miranshah road, intercepted Qahaar's taxi and dragged her and her two Pakistani companions out of their vehicle at gunpoint.
The video released Wednesday shows Qahaar sitting in a dark room with a dagger pointing at her as she makes a desperate plea for help.
"The time is very short now and my life is going to end, so I need someone to help me – either the Pakistani government or my own country. I want to go home," she said.
She pointed to the dagger and said that the Taliban were likely to behead her – as they did to Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak in February – if a ransom of $2 million was not paid by the end of March.
"These people are serious. Please help me," she said.
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By NBC News’ Karim Hilmi
BAGHDAD – Many Iraqis are feeling optimistic about the future of their country as peace and stability seem to be making a comeback, six years after the U.S. invasion.
The security gains have allowed many people who were displaced by years of sectarian violence to return to their former homes and neighborhoods – or contemplate doing so soon.
Basil Yassen said the gains achieved in the past two years have given the Iraqi people renewed hope. He should know; the horrors of war touched his family directly.
He used to live in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, a former bastion for al-Qaida militants who killed his son, Ali, and his wife, Basima, in June 2007.
Their deaths were grisly. Both were tortured and placed in sulfuric acid before they were shot. Yassen only found their corpses 10 days after they were killed.
But now he’s confident that major strides made in Baghdad’s security will allow life to return to a level of normalcy.
"The stability has allowed many displaced families to return to their former neighborhoods and jobs," said Yassen. "Now, I can wander in Baghdad without the fear of being killed or kidnapped for my ethnic or religion or sect background."
An engineer in the Iraqi Naval Force in his late 50s, Yassen thinks that during the coming months Iraq will witness a "revolution" in construction projects, as well as progress in industry and agriculture.
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
Cuba’s southern Isle of Youth was battered by two powerful hurricanes last summer, including Gustav, the worst storm to hit here in 50 years.
Gustav, a Category 4 hurricane, packed 140 mph winds that turned 95 percent of the homes on the Isle of Youth into rubble and decimated the entire power grid.
A week later Hurricane Ike swept through and washed away the few buildings that had been left standing.
The army chief on the ground accessing the damage, Maj. Gen. Alvaro Lopez, described the island as looking like the "remnants of a nuclear blast."
But in what seems to be nothing short of a miracle, the fast-moving storms only minimally impacted the coast and natural wildlife.
While the hurricanes did cause some beach erosion, especially along the southern coast, the small island’s protected coral reefs remain untouched and the wide range of underwater life continues to thrive.
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By NBC News’ Bo Gu
BEIJING – After eight days of house arrest in a dingy hotel room in Shanghai, Cui Fufang was released, just as the National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of China’s Communist Party leadership, ended in Beijing last week.
The detention, according to Cui, began when she, along with dozens of other aggrieved citizens from Shanghai, went to Beijing to apply for permission to protest against the corruption that often characterizes property disputes in China.
Cui’s story is similar to that of millions of other disadvantaged Chinese residents who lived on land that local governments wanted to use for large construction projects. When residents are unable to reach an agreement with developers – who are usually well connected with local governments – the houses are often torn down without consent from their owners.
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| Alfred Cheng Jin / Reuters |
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An unidentified woman cries as she is stopped by paramilitary policemen after protesting near the Great Hall of the People during the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 11.The woman was later taken into a police van and driven away. |
Cui’s house was demolished in August 2005 when the Pudong District Government told her the land had been requisitioned for the upcoming Shanghai World Exposition in 2010. Cui did not receive a penny, or any other form of compensation, when her house was torn down.
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By NBC News' Carol Grisanti and Fakhar Rehman in Islamabad
The Pakistan government bowed to the will of the people on Monday and agreed to reinstate the deposed chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, two years after he was dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf.
As news of the deal leaked out in Islamabad, the capital, jubliant crowds rushed to the popular Chaudhry's house clapping, cheering and chanting slogans of victory in what has come to symbolize the peoples' struggle for the rule of law in the country.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators joined lawyers, civil rights activists and party members of opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore on Sunday, determined to march to Islamabad and stage an indefinite sit-in until Chaudhry was restored.
Rahat Dar / EPA |
Flames rise from a police bus that was set on fire
Sunday by demonstrators in Lahore, Pakistan,
during a rally calling for the restoration of deposed
Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
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The rally had briefly turned violent as police fired tear gas and used batons on the crowds but as their numbers swelled, the police pulled back to allow the procession to proceed. The pictures of anti-government protesters clashing with police, broadcast continually on 24-hour news channels, has raised alarm in the United States about the stability of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, already under threat from a growing internal Islamic insurgency.
Sharif, who had been put under house arrest at his Lahore home to prevent him from joining the march, challenged the arrest order and came out to lead the procession. The Lahore police had defied the orders from the government in Islamabad to thwart the march.
“No one can stop us now,” said Athar Minallah, a Supreme Court lawyer and spokesman for Pakistan’s deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was dismissed by President Musharraf in 2007. “We have succeeded and now the ultimate goal is the supremacy of the constitution and the independence of the judiciary.”
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By Ali Arouzi, NBC News Producer
TEHRAN, Iran – When you see an American flag in Iran, it's usually on fire.
But that wasn’t the case during the Takhti Cup, a two-day freestyle wrestling tournament hosted by Iran. The United States competed against nine other nations – including Iran – and the Stars and Stripes waved proudly throughout the event.
"We love being in Iran. It’s the greatest wrestling country in the world. It's a wonderful place to come and compete," said Zeke Jones, head coach of the U.S. team. "The Iranian wrestlers are serious competition for us and the fans treat us like rock stars, so this is a great place."
Jones, who originally visited Iran in 1998 and was one of the first Americans to compete in the country after a nearly 20-year freeze, said he hopes athletic events like this one will lead to warmer relations between the two countries.
"As for the politics, I think that any time wrestling can be a tool to bring countries together, it's a wonderful thing," he said.
Three decades ago, the United States cut off diplomatic ties with Iran after the protracted embassy hostage crisis. But since then, the two countries have occasionally put aside their differences for the sake of athletic competition. For example, this is the seventh time a U.S. team has competed in the Takhti Cup since 1998. Also an Iranian basketball team played in the United States last year.
But these events don't always go according to plan. In February, at the eleventh hour, Iran decided not to issue visas for a U.S. women's badminton team who had been invited to compete in the country – a move the Obama administration at the time called "unfortunate."
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By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer
WINNENDEN, Germany – Why? That is the predominant question for the shocked residents of the small southern German town of Winnenden and for TV stations and newspapers across the country this morning.
All night, forensic experts collected evidence in search of clues that could possibly explain why 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer went on a wild rampage at his former school and killed 15 people before taking his own life on Wednesday.
During a press conference on Thursday investigators revealed more clues that may explain Kretschmer’s possible motive for the rampage.
At 2:45 a.m., just hours before the attack, officials said that Kretschmer warned of his plans on an Internet chatroom. He wrote that he was tired of his life, he felt everyone was laughing at him and that nobody recognized his potential.
He added that he would be visiting his former school and wrote, "Tomorrow you will hear from me, just remember the name of a place called Winnenden."
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BEIJING – Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, which prompted the Dalai Lama to flee from his homeland into neighboring India.
The western half of China has been on high alert leading up to the anniversary as Chinese authorities stepped up their battle for hearts and minds.
NBC News’ Adrienne Mong reports on the dual-prong approach intensifying propaganda across the country and security in the region.
For weeks, Chinese state-run media has also been awash with reports not marking the Dalai Lama’s exile, but what Chinese officials declare was the emancipation of Tibet’s serfs following his departure from the Himalayan kingdom.
Here are excerpts from a documentary produced by CCTV-9, the English language division of China Central Television, that recounts Tibet's history from China’s perspective.
More related links on China-Tibet relations:
Dalai Lama blasts 'brutal crackdown' in Tibet
Council on Foreign Relations: 50 years on, China-Tibet tensions persist
World Blog: In Tibet, it's just the facts, ma'am
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By Chemene Pelzer, NBC News producer
SOUNKALA, Mali – "To educate a girl is to educate a thousand people," says Maimouna Samaké, a mother of six (including five girls). "If you put one seed of millet in the ground and rain comes, it grows and gives many seeds."
And now Samaké, one of 2,000 residents in this small village in one of the world’s poorest countries, has a chance to see this prediction come true thanks to buildOn, an American non-profit organization that is building a school in her community.
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| Chemene Pelzer/ NBC News |
| Maimouna Samaké and her five daughters. |
For 17 years, buildOn has been sending American high school students overseas to create schools in places where literacy and formal education are usually out of reach. The organization, which has built about 300 schools in Mali, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, Nicaragua and Haiti, says its goal is to empower young Americans in mostly urban areas to get involved in their own communities while at the same time bringing literacy to children and adults in the developing world.
And with only about 70 children enrolled in Sounkala's current make-shift school, where mud floors, inadequate lighting, few desks and an absence of books make for a less than ideal learning environment, they certainly could use buildOn’s help.
As a producer for the Today Show, I went along to Sounkala to see how one of buildOn’s projects comes together.
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By Andrea Mitchell, NBC News
The United States is engaging Syria again — if tentatively.
A senior American diplomat, briefing reporters by phone from Damascus today, said that his talks with Syrian officials were constructive, comprehensive and lengthy — but that this is only the beginning of engagement. As for specific achievements, the U.S. official — Jeffrey Feltman, acting assistant secretary of state — said, "Let's keep our expectations in check here." He said that no subjects were taboo, but that this was just the start of a process.
Feltman and Dan Shapiro of the National Security Council held talks with Syria's foreign minister and two other officials — but did not see Syria's President Bashar Assad and did not say what the next steps would be.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer
BEIJING – It’s rare that those of us at the NBC News Beijing bureau ever envy Chinese politicians. But around this time of the year, some of us wouldn’t mind trading places with members of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC).
Being subject to a 13-hour time difference with our head office in New York during the winter – translating to a deadline of 7:30 a.m. (or 6:30 p.m. in New York – when the Nightly News with Brian Williams airs), we watch the annual NPC proceedings with a certain amount of, well, sleep-deprived longing.
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| Catching some zzz's in the Forbidden City. |
Every year, bountiful Chinese media coverage results in hours of video footage and web photo postings of the days-long session (this year the NPC runs for nine days), featuring sleepers amongst the 3,000-odd delegates.
Napping isn’t limited to lawmakers. Journalists following the 2007 Chinese Communist Party Congress (which takes place every five years) took turns "naming that dozing vice premier."
Gatherings for the NPC give way to the sport of online nap commentary. It might have been instructive to chart how many delegates earlier this week snoozed through a debate over a proposal to shorten the work week to 4.5 days. (Four more hours a week to nap!)
But the best nap site making the rounds has to be this one – SleepingChinese.com.
Best of all, it’s got no commentary and no politics.
Let's just hope we never get caught on camera here.
By NBC News' Fakhar Rehman
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- "Most countries were already too frightened to come to Pakistan," Abbas Ali, a 14-year-old high school student in Islamabad said when asked about this week's ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. "Now after this incident I doubt there will ever be another international sporting event here," Ali said. "It was very bad."
Thirteen-year-old Irtiza Abbas agreed. "This was a shameful act," he said. "We were all waiting for the 2011 World Cup to take place in Pakistan, now I don't know what will happen." Abbas said he was praying his country would still be able to host it. "I would rather play cricket than eat," he added, sadly.
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| Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images |
People gather as police officer Rana Abid, right, shows photographs of his best friend, Tanveer Iqbaal, who was killed in the terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, during a tribute to the victims in Lahore on March 4. Six Pakistani police guards were killed in the attack.
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Pakistan is scheduled to co-host the World Cup along with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, but the International Cricket Council (ICC) could strip Pakistan of hosting rights following the attacks. The ICC said it would give the country more time before making a decision, but many in Pakistan fear the worst.
"This was a major shock," former Pakistan cricket captain Wasim Akram said. "I'm sure this will end the game for us for the next couple of years. There is no way they will allow us to host the World Cup now," he said.
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Every Olympic host suffers some variation of post-Games hangover, but Beijing's seems more acute in the wake of the global economic downturn.
NBC News' Adrienne Mong takes a look at how the Chinese capital is coping after an unprecedented building boom leading up to last year's Summer Olympics.
After the shocking detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. military took a hard look at how they were running detention facilities and programs in Iraq. NBC News' Sarah Ford reports on what's changed.
By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – Cuba’s President Raul Castro sure knows how to get the nation to sit up and listen.
While most people were at school or work and far away from their TV sets on Monday, a news announcer read a typed sheet of paper announcing the reshuffling of 10 Cabinet positions and the collapse of four key ministries into two. But by the end of the day, the shake-up was all people were talking about.
The Cuban public seemed most surprised by the removal of two men closely aligned with Raul’s predecessor, Fidel Castro, and pegged as the frontrunners of the next generation of leaders.
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| Javier Galeano / AP File |
| President Raul Castro, right, stands with then-Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque during a session of the National Assembly of Popular Power in Havana on June 29, 2007. |
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque was replaced by his own deputy, Bruno Rodriguez. And Dr. Carlos Lage lost his job as Cabinet Secretary to Brig. Gen. Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra, but Lage remains one of the Council of State’s vice presidents.
Both men are popular leaders, especially with the island’s younger generations.
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By Ed Flanagan, NBC News Researcher
BEIJING – As the government here tries in vain to control its burgeoning and unruly blogosphere, the term "duo maomao" or "eluding the cat" has been added to the ever-growing list of buzzwords in Chinese ‘Netizens’ vernacular.
Eluding the cat is a children’s game, similar to hide and seek. In this case, though, it refers to an incident far beyond a lighthearted children’s game: the authorities’ convoluted explanation of the death of Li Qiaoming, a prisoner in a Jinning county prison in China’s southeastern Yunnan province.
Twenty-four-year-old Li was arrested in January when he allegedly was caught illegally logging. His death due to severe head trauma less than a month after he was jailed was ruled an accident by the Puning County Public Security Bureau. They declared in their official report that Li had "run into a wall" while playing hide and seek.
A local government newspaper, the Yunnan Information Times, later offered more details, describing a fight that supposedly erupted during the game:
"The police disclosed on the evening of February 12 the latest development in their investigation: ‘The deceased caught the fellow prisoner named Pu during the 'elude the cat' game. Pu was unhappy and the two men had a dispute. During the argument, Pu kicked the deceased once and then punched him on the head once. The deceased lost his balance and fell backwards, whereupon his head hit the sharp corner formed by the wall and the door. This was how the deceased got injured."
The explanation of the circumstances behind prisoner Li’s death instantly caused an uproar in the Chinese blogosphere.
On Sina.com, a popular Web portal in China, the incident’s discussion thread generated over 54,000 comments expressing outrage – and a good deal of mordant humor – over the official report.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer
MAWU VILLAGE, Beijing – For more than 20 years, Wu Yu Lu's wife and neighbors wondered why he wasn't a better farmer.
"Everyone else could produce 800 pounds of crop," said Dong Su Yen, his beleaguered wife. "But he would produce just 200 pounds."
In fact, the 48-year-old Wu had better things to do with his time – like tinkering with machines.
"I've always hated farming," said Wu, who comes from a long line of peasants on the impoverished outskirts of Beijing. "I just didn't want to farm."
"Oh, he was always spending money on these bits and pieces," said Dong. "You know, back then we really had no money, none at all, but any little bit he would spend on a machine part."
Those "bits and pieces" – scraps of recycled metal, wire, screws, nails, and secondhand batteries – enabled Wu to build moveable parts. That led to miniature robots. And those in turn led to life-size machines like the rickshaw man – or simply “Number 32” – a tin robot that pulls a two-wheeled cart and recites in Mandarin, “Hello everybody, Wu Yulu is my dad, I take him around town.”
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